We want to make the union more accesssible

The purpose for Uppsala student union is to represent the students, at the humanities and social science faculties and the faculty of medicine at Uppsala university, towards the university, towards politicians at different levels of government and towards the rest of society.

To get a powerful and diverse student union that is equipped for turning words into action we need to lower the bar to get involved in the union. This is Uppsala university (UUS) students main focus.

There are today a number of ways to get involved in the student union either locally in the section that represent you, or in some of the groups in uppsala student union i.e. the group for dyslectics. What you can’t do as a single student is to get elected to the general assembly of the union. To be eligible to get elected you need to be a part of a party that is running in the election. This is one thing that makes the union less accessible for students that wants to get involved. We want to see a different system where it is possible for every student to get elected on his or her own merits. We also want to break the election down into electoral districts based on where you study, this will add a dimension to the representativity in the union.

As an international student it is hard to grasp what the union is doing because all meetings are in Swedish and all protocols and the majority of the documentation in the union is only available in Swedish. In this way the union is whether we like it or not excluding our international students. In this regard the union is no better than the university. UUS wants to change this. We want to make more of our documentation available in English. We want to make sure that if a student who does not speak Swedish and want to take part in any branch of the union we should let her by adapt the meeting language to English. We would also like to see student councils in the union that represent non-native speaking students to have English as their default language.

Last but not least; every student that has come to the union to be able to affect their own or other student’s situations should be equipped with the tools to do so. By educating student representatives in how to make a difference and giving the representatives a platform to work together and draw from each others experience.

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Gustav Sundell
Second name on UUS list in the election to Uppsala student union